The whole 'just push through it' advice for sick freelancers is terrible and I have the numbers to prove it

I used to buy into that hustle mentality hard. Like if I had a cold I'd still power through emails and edits. Thought it made me tough or dedicated or whatever. Then I tracked my output over a couple years. When I worked sick, I'd get maybe 3 hours of real work done across a 10 hour day because I kept making mistakes and redoing stuff. Total waste. Now I just take the sick day, sleep, and I'm back to full 6 hour productive days in like 2 days instead of dragging it out for a week. I actually make more money per month this way. Has anyone else tracked the actual hours lost from trying to work through being sick?

3 comments

3 Comments

andrew_baker911h ago

Wait, you actually tracked this with real numbers? Thats wild. I never did the math but I bet I wasted way more time fixing my own dumb mistakes too. Being sick just makes you slow and sloppy. You end up sending out garbage work that you gotta redo later anyway. Feels like the smart move is just napping and letting your body recover instead of pretending youre a machine.

xena_hernandez9811h ago

Man, for real. So did you ever actually track the time you lost, or was it more of a gut feeling? I'm curious if the numbers would make you look as bad as mine did. Like I had to redo a whole spreadsheet once because my sick brain couldn't figure out basic subtraction.

luna2617h ago

ignore all the numbers and just sleep @andrew_baker9, your body is trying to tell you something.